C. Pirillo was born on July 26, 1973 in Des Moines, Iowa. He studied at the University of Northern Iowa, where he majored in English education. For a short time he was a 7th grade English student teacher at Coke R. Stevenson middle school in San Antonio Texas. He currently lives near Seattle, Washington with his two dogs Wicket and Pixie, after whom the bots on his IRC chat room are named. Chris streams video of his office live 24/7 and has a large community of dedicated supporters that watch his frequently recorded videos on various tech based and non-tech based topics.

Since 2001, Pirillo has hosted Gnomedex, a yearly conference covering art, science, social media, blogs and new and emerging technologies and concepts, such as Web 2.0. Gnomedex 10 will be held August 19 through August 21, 2010 in Seattle, Washington.

Pirillo Streams Live from his home office on Ustream and is one of the more popular streams, with over 5,000 people regularly watching his videos there. His live stream is the basis for YouTube videos recorded daily with a focus on software, computers, iPhone applications, operating systems, gaming and other technology-related topics and events. As of August 16, 2010, Pirillo has had over 88,000,000 views. On January 20, 2010 he reached 100,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel.

In January 2010, Chris began hosting "Help Desk with Chris Pirillo", a weekly live video call-in show on Microsoft's Channel 9 web site. At the moment the show is only starting with the pilot and its activity is pending on the success of that pilot.

Pirillo runs several online communities. His Lockergnome blogging network has over 100,000 members. Geeks, his Ning-based social network, has over 24,000 users.

Lockergnome originally started as a technology mailing list in 1996, offering tricks and tips for operating systems and applications, software suggestions (with an emphasis on public domain and shareware software) and web site recommendations. Several mailing lists are now provided, offering technology Advice and Tips and other content syndicated from Lockergnomes blogs and web forums, including IT Professionals and problem solvers.

Chris Pirillo is the author of several books, including "Poor Richard's E-mail Publishing", "Online! The Book" with John C. Dvorak and Wendy Taylor and several ebooks.